


Which Holy Estate

by Crowgirl, elizajane, Kivrin



Series: On the Strength of the Evidence [25]
Category: Grantchester (TV)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Backstory, Consensual Infidelity, Established Relationship, Exes, F/F, F/M, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Marriage, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Canon, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-09-23 16:17:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9665186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl, https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kivrin/pseuds/Kivrin
Summary: "Vic, have you ever read…” Sidney switches his cigarette to his other hand in order to tap the ash off in the convenient glass dish. “Have you ever actuallylistenedto a marriage service?""Once or twice." He sits easily under Sidney's stare as the waiter hands over his cocktail and takes Vic's coins. "All other forsaking, sickness and health, with my body I thee worship..." The smirk again.





	1. In which Sidney and Victor Discuss Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crowgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/gifts).



> This story began with an email from Crowgirl, subject line "make a fic from a name" and read simply: "Captain Victor Gasgoyne-Cecil"
> 
> Shortly thereafter, this happened.

Sidney is in his study, staring at a blank sheet of paper wound into the typewriter, when Mrs M calls down the hall: "There's a Mr Gascoyne-Cecil on the telephone wishing to speak to you!"

He can hear the sniff in her voice -- even at twenty paces and through the oak paneling of the study door.

He blinks as his brain catches up with his ears and feels his stomach lurch unpleasantly as he makes sense of the familiar name. _Victor. How the_ hell _had the man --_ Sidney hasn’t spoken to Vic in years.

And he doesn’t especially want to speak with him now.

He swallows back the urge to ask Mrs M to claim he isn’t at home, but no doubt Vic has already heard her calling for him down the open line. "In a moment!" he calls instead, pushing back his desk chair and getting reluctantly to his feet.

He opens the concordance on the desk to lend credence to his claim of having been working on his sermon, then hurries out to the phone. Mrs M is standing with the receiver in hand, as always treating the live line as a nervous visitor who ought not to be left alone. "Thank you," Sidney says firmly, and turns his back on her to put the instrument to his ear.

"Vic?" It comes out a question, more tentative in tone than Sidney would like.

“Good, it is you. There can’t be that many Chamberses, but you as village vicar was hard to picture.” The voice at the other end of the line is tinny and faint, a poor connection. But the clipped rhythm of Vic's speech, and the confiding tone that had once made Sidney feel like the most interesting man in a crowded mess hall comes through as clearly as ever. Sidney sets his jaw against both the painfully familiar pull of that confidence and the burn of his own resentment of its lure, and prepares for the request, knowing there will be one. Vic wouldn’t go to the trouble of seeking him out simply to get an address for a Christmas card.

When the request finally comes it startles a brief, unbelieving laugh from Sidney. "Perform a wedding?!"

"Yes. Well, it's your game, these days, isn't it? Saturday week suit you?"

"It... I'd have to... no.” Sidney twists the telephone cord around his thumb until it bites. “Vic, there are... there are rules."

There's a brief, uncharacteristic pause -- so uncharacteristic that Sidney wonders if the line has gone dead.

"Sid," Vic starts, and then stops again. Sidney winces at the nickname. He’d never liked it -- protested it at the time -- but Vic had found it amusing and eventually Sidney had given up the battle. One of the many small ways in which he’d capitulated.

"It's...not that sort of wedding."

"Not what sort of wedding?" If Sidney wasn't certain he had lost hold of this conversation, he's certain now. Behind him, the front door opens and when he twists to look over his shoulder at who's come in; it's Leonard with a parcel of what looks to be books under his arm, sorting through the post as he absently elbows the door shut.

“Hullo, Sidney, I --” Leonard cuts off his greeting when he realizes Sidney is at the telephone and Sidney grimaces and nods in return -- _yes, sorry_ \-- as Leonard passes over a letter postmarked from Germany. _Hildegard_ , Sidney thinks with a slight lightening of spirit; she had promised to send him a review of the new jazz club in Kreuzberg. Dickens comes clattering down the stair, tail wagging to greet Leonard who goes to pet him, and with the sudden bustle Sidney almost misses Vic's response.

"...a chap can just explain over the telephone," Vic is saying. "Look -- is there somewhere in London we could meet? I'd buy you a drink?"

Sidney swallows down reflexive irritation at the request, taking note of the way Vic is maneuvering for a meeting on his own terms -- even if he is footing the bill. Sidney knows he should tell Vic to tell him what he wants here and now or fuck off. But he’s also curious, and he doesn’t want Leonard to drop dead from the shock of hearing his vicar say ‘fuck off’ to a faceless parishioner on the telephone. So he finds himself naming a bar -- one in Piccadilly that even Amanda called ‘a bit dear’, but if Vic is paying Sidney had better get his money’s worth -- and ringing off with plans to go down the day after tomorrow.

“Well, fuck,” he says under his breath to the wall -- hoping neither Mrs M nor Leonard have heard -- before turning back to his study in search of a desperately-needed cigarette.

* * *

Two days later Sidney finds himself in a sleek hotel bar in Piccadilly, holding a tumbler of excellent Scotch and staring at the snapshot Vic has pushed across the table. It shows Vic in shirtsleeves, his straight dark hair tousled and his mustache untidy, smiling in a way Sidney never saw, mouth open and his eyes soft as he leans into a younger man who's laughing at the camera.

"We met in Burma," Vic says, punctuating disclosure with a tight drag on his cigarette. "In '49."

Sidney pushes the photograph back across their table. At the bottom of a desk drawer in his study at the vicarage, he has a snapshot Caro took last August when he'd gone with the Keating family to the seaside. Himself and Geordie with the kids in the surf, shoulder to shoulder -- Geordie laughing at something Sidney no longer remembers, their eyes on the girls but their attention unmistakably on each other. He still remembers the feel of the hot sun, the cold salt spray, the feel of Geordie's bare shoulder sticking slightly against his upper arm as they leaned into one another.

He can't imagine carrying that photograph anywhere, or showing it to anyone in a place this public.

He swallows his whiskey and leans back, waiting for Vic to say more. He knows Vic will start talking again if Sidney waits him out; the man never could stand silence that might be filled with his own words. In the early days of Sidney’s infatuation, it had been a relief to exist quietly on the margins of Vic’s bright socialialty. His desire to fill space had more than covered Sidney’s own desire to disappear, not that he’d thought of it like that at the time. Toward the end, he had begun to understand how much Vic’s dislike of quiet contemplation shaped his impatience at Sidney’s religious yearnings. Vic is compact and wiry like Geordie, but he has none of Geordie’s focus, or his pleasure in a quiet shared activity. Vic could hardly bear Sidney reading a chapter of a book or writing a paragraph of a letter while they were in the same room, far less spend an afternoon like last Saturday’s when Geordie whittled shims to repair David’s strained highchair while Sidney read over Leonard’s sermon draft.

"His name's Martin. He was born there -- father was a missionary, Methodist or something of that sort. Sent Martin home to school, of course, but he returned after the war, and." Another drag. "I was out there on business." The mysterious, amorphous, and very lucrative family firm that kept him in silk socks.

"And you kept in touch?" Sidney pushes past the bitter sarcasm that's quick to rise, but can't quite reach the tone of bland pastoral curiosity he's trying for.

Vic exhales, almost a sigh, and reaches down to pick up the photograph Sidney has returned to him. He reaches inside the front of his tailored suit coat and pulls out a fine leather billfold. The photograph disappears inside and he tucks the billfold back again.

"You might say that," he says, finally. "Until this past August, Martin ran a club in Tavoy - in the south, on the Malaysian peninsula,” Vic adds before Sidney asks “I stayed with him whenever I had reason to be in the country." Another pause, and Sidney suspects that Vic is giving him time to imagine what _staying with him_ entails, a suspicion reinforced by the smugly insinuating tone of Vic’s next words: "I found reasons to be in Tavoy quite regularly."

"And now?" Sidney asks. He gets the intonation right this time, as if Vic is half a pair of what Mrs M calls "hand-holders" in his study at the vicarage. The whiskey shouldn't be going to his head already, or at all, but he feels as if the room is wavering gently. Someone, he thinks, should give ordinands better warning about what risks the priesthood brings to personal relationships. Why _must_ his past mistakes insist on seeking him out to request his services?

"Now he's in England. In London."

"In your flat."

"No." Vic's lips purse slightly. "In rooms. He won't...he wants...if we're to be… He says it doesn’t feel _right_.”

"And that's not cause for you to take your pleasure elsewhere?" Sidney allows himself the petty pleasure of being snide; the old wound apparently not as healed as he had thought it was. _Sodding hell_ , he thinks, and takes a long drag on his cigarette. _Think about that later._

"Believe me, Sid, I'm surprised as you are, but as it happens it's not."

Sidney struggles to find the end of the conversation that, if pulled, will loose the knot. He’s ridiculously distracted by the fact that Vic keeps calling him _Sid_. For some reason, what keeps coming to mind is what Geordie’s expression would be if he could hear it.

"And this is where...marriage comes in? Is there...a girl? Woman," he corrects, then -- thinking of Cathy and Caroline -- "or...women?"

But he's fumbling this, badly, because Vic is already shaking his head, lips pursed in amusement around the dwindling cigarette.

"Can you imagine -- _me_ , Sid, married to a _woman_?" He manages to make the proposition sound utterly ridiculous, as if Sidney had just suggested he become a curate. Sidney has to admit that the sum of his acquaintance with Vic indicates both are, indeed, equally implausible.

He knocks back the rest of his whiskey and pushes the glass toward Vic in an unsubtle suggestion a second round would be most welcome.

"So where do I, and the question of marriage vows, enter into it, then?" Hauling Sidney all the way to London just to show off a current lover seems a little low even for Vic.

Vic stubs out his cigarette and draws another from a silver case. He offers it to Sidney, but Sidney's is still smoldering in his hand. He shakes his head and waits while Vic summons a waiter with a flick of a hand and secures both a light for himself and the-same-again for both of them.

"The surprising thing about this, for me, has been the contentment," he says, while behind the bar there's a great play with the cocktail shaker to produce whatever brilliantly-colored confection he's been drinking. "For Martin, it's been confusing. The early influence of religion, perhaps."

"Had he not...? Before..?" Sidney hopes his ellipses are enough to keep the topic of the conversation from the waiter who delivers his whiskey.

"Oh, certainly. Widely," Vic adds with a smirk. "I did say he had a club, didn’t I? But that's just the trouble, it seems... as long as he was wholly dissolute nothing worried him, but the closer we come to being settled, the more he feels a lack of what I believe you lot call 'the benefit of clergy.'"

"You want me. To... you and...? Vic, have you ever read…” Sidney switches his cigarette to his other hand in order to tap the ash off in the convenient glass dish. “Have you ever actually _listened_ to a marriage service?"

"Once or twice." He sits easily under Sidney's stare as the waiter hands over his cocktail and takes Vic's coins. "All other forsaking, sickness and health, with my body I thee worship..." The smirk again.

Sidney remembers, suddenly, the precise angle of the sunlight through the dust motes and the pressure of the too-low table against his knees in the theological college library the afternoon he read the connotations of "pais" in first-century Greek. Now there's the same sense of shifting, of something slotting into place as the rest of the world goes askew. The words he's prompted dozens of brides with echo like the tolling of a great bell: love, honor, and keep him... In his mind is Geordie's face and the answer is inescapable: _I do, I do, I do._

He takes a deep breath, then realizes that he has no words at the ready, no a clear idea of how to navigate this conversation. He always has found it difficult to give Vic a flat-out "no." Which is probably why Vic had gone to the trouble of looking him up and placing the telephone call. Damn the man.

"You do realize that whatever we ... that it couldn't take place in the church. Or the vicarage."

Vic shrugs, affecting nonchalance, even though Sidney doesn't miss the way his shoulders relax ever so slightly when he realizes that Sidney is taking the question as a legitimate one to be examined rather than rejected outright.

"And it wouldn't have any...there would be no license, Vic." Sidney has to swallow around a traitorous lump in his throat as he says this. He hasn't spent five minutes altogether since the first time Geordie's lips touched his own thinking about the pieces of paper that tie Geordie to Cathy, Cathy to Geordie in the eyes of the state -- yet leave himself and Geordie, Cathy and Caro legal strangers to one another. And now, from the distance that whiskey brings, he’s aware that he resents Vic for asking the question, for making the request, for _forcing_ him to imagine that it would be a request that should be possible to fulfill.

"I've already put him in my will," Vic says, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward. "I did that years ago. That's not the point."

"And what is the point? For you," Sidney clarifies, not that he thinks he needs to, but this is uncharted territory in more than one way. He can think of a number of points, none of them either flattering or charitable to Vic, but he holds those back and takes another swallow of his drink.

"A mark," Vic says. "Not visible, of course, or only in certain settings. But a...line. A start. To say that how we are is how we mean to go on."

It's a better answer than Sidney gets from many couples of the conventional sort. "And Martin?"

Vic smokes in silence.

"Or haven't you asked him?"

"He came back to England for me," Vic says abruptly. "I didn't want to raise specifics about... something I might not be able to give him."

"So you're only guessing that he wants..."

"No."

"No?" Sidney tries to keep the question tonally neutral and fails. He's here, after all, so he must trust Vic up to a point -- but only up to it. Vic hasn't asked if Sidney's been involved recently and Sidney won’t offer. And he's having a difficult time picturing Victor Gascoyne-Cecil as the marrying type even if the marriage was to be a clandestine and legally meaningless one.

Vic's mouth twists in acknowledgement of the sharp skepticism in Sidney's voice, but he repeat the assertion: "No. I -- he's been dropping...hints."

"Hints."

"Look, do you want an enumerated list in triplicate? He hasn’t said outright, but I get the sense that wants to do things on the up and up with his God; I find -- against all precedent and expectation -- that I want to do things on the up and up with Martin. That's the beginning, middle, and end of it."

Sidney sighs. "You know, it's customary to have this conversation with bri-- with both -- with the couple, together." He looks around the room, almost as if he expects Martin to be hanging back at the doorway waiting for a signal from Vic.

"So you'll do it."

Sidney sits back, wishing as he only rarely does that he had ever found the rituals of the high-church party useful. It's the sort of moment that seems to call for a rosary, and not a setting that works for his own style of conversational extemporaneous prayer. _Lord, help,_ he thinks. In the blank that follows he takes a long drag on his forgotten cigarette. All that comes to his mind is the story of the centurion asking Jesus to heal his servant (and, perhaps, lover). The story of the marriage at Cana. And the words (printed in red in the Salvation Army New Testament that had been the only book to be found in the military transport barracks) “the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.”

"I'll talk with you, _both_ of you, about what I can -- what I’d be _willing to_ \-- do," he answers, finally. "Someplace private. Where we can be frank."

“Thank you,” Vic says quietly.

Sidney thinks, as he crushes out the end of his cigarette, that that is the most unexpected piece of the entire thing.


	2. In which Sidney and Martin Discuss Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There's a Mr Martin Sitwell from London to see you," Mrs M reports from the door, interrupting Sidney and Leonard as they huddle over Leonard's latest attempt at making Krister Stendhal accessible to the masses. "I've put him in the parlor."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In deep and everlasting thanks to Crowgirl who encourages the initial draft of each chapter with popcorn-gobbling gifs and pushes us to make the second and subsequent drafts ever better.

"There's a Mr Martin Sitwell from London to see you," Mrs M reports from the door, interrupting Sidney and Leonard as they huddle over Leonard's latest attempt at making Krister Stendhal accessible to the masses. "I've put him in the parlor."

Sidney draws a blank for several seconds, long enough for Leonard to clear his throat and begin, "If you would like me to...?"

Martin. _Martin_. Sidney hasn’t heard from Vic since their meeting in London over a week ago, and now it seems his lover has turned up at the door of the vicarage. What in God's name was he --

"No, no, that's --" Sidney shoves the remaining typescript pages into Leonard's hands and stands hastily as Leonard scrabbles to accept the jumbled papers. "I'll -- he's a -- he's a friend of a friend. I just wasn't -- I'll go see what he wants, then." He glances from Leonard to Mrs M, knowing he's only managed to plant further questions in their minds, and beats a hasty retreat down the front hall.

Martin is taller than he looked in the black and white snap Victor showed Sidney in London, but only slightly different in coloring. Victor, it appeared, still enjoyed men who had the advantage of height over him. Martin has very fine dark brown hair that's inclined to fall over his forehead, and fair skin that must have been a trial in the tropics. Also attractive, long-fingered hands that he holds still on the back of the armchair with what Sidney's experienced eye recognizes as tremendous effort. "Mr Sitwell," Sidney says. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting. Did Mrs M offer you tea?"

"No."

"Would you like some? Or would you prefer a drink? If you walked from the train station you must be thirsty."

"Oh. No, I drove." He smiles then, and though it's a pale shadow of the smile in the photograph it lights him up like a stained-glass window. Sidney can imagine the prize of that smile being worth a good deal of effort. "Victor says you're to be trusted about whiskey, though. Among other things."

 _Victor_. Sidney nods and shuts the door as he steps into the room. He goes to the cabinet for glasses. "I'm afraid a country parish salary doesn't run to me being as trustworthy as I might like, but I have a bottle of Bushmills ten year...?"

"Please. The teetotal business I gave up early," he says as Sidney pours. "Victor said he told you my father..."

"Was a missionary. Is?"

"Was. Thank you," he adds, taking the glass. "And call me Martin, please. I'm sorry, I was going to say that first." His diffidence comes as a surprise; Sidney realizes that he’s expected Martin to be as gregarious as Vic, if not more so. But Vic might enjoy the contrast -- certainly Sidney has thought, in retrospect, that Vic had picked quiet lovers as a counterpoint to his own brashness. Until he’d grown bored with them, at least.

Sidney swallows that uncharitable thought and recalls himself to his duties as a host. "And I'm Sidney. Please sit down."

Martin takes a grateful swallow of liquor and then sits.

"Methodist, Vic...Victor said?" Sidney clears his throat to cover his stumble over the name.

"Worse than that. Baptist, I'm afraid."

They share a laugh at the inside joke, and Sidney watches with satisfaction as the tension in Martin's shoulders eases even further. He seats himself on the settee opposite Martin and leans forward with elbows on knees and whiskey in hand.

"I wasn't...expecting to see you, here? ...Today?" Hadn’t really anticipated meeting Vic’s lover in the vicarage parlor at all, to be honest. He’d pictured Vic’s (no doubt well-appointed) flat in London, or a private room at Vic’s club, to the extent that he’d pictured this meeting at all. It would be just like Vic to send Martin up to Grantchester without thinking to telephone ahead, on the assumption that Sidney would be in and free to meet with the man.

He shakes his head to clear it of frustration with Vic -- _not the point, not right now_ \-- and looks up to see Martin's pale skin flush slightly. "No."

Sidney takes a sip of whiskey and tries to look...available for consultation.

Martin glances toward the sitting room door.

"They know not to listen in when I'm --"

"Taking confession?"

"That's the Catholics. The C of E doesn't require confession."

"Or grant absolution?"

Sidney considers his visitor. "Is that what you're looking for?"

"I...can a person be absolved of not wanting absolution? Not believing he needs it? Or not for..." Martin stares down into his glass. "There are things I'm sorry for, things I could...should...ask to be forgiven...but loving Victor's not one of them." He looks up, suddenly defiant. "Buggering Victor's not one of them."

Sidney turns a surprised laugh into a cough, then chases that down with the last of his whiskey.

"No," he says, hoarsely, too soon after swallowing. "No, I wouldn't imagine so."

"You wouldn't." The wary statement isn't quite a question, though Martin is clearly in want of an answer.

Sidney opens his mouth, then closes it again.

"Vic -- Victor must have told you a bit about me," is what he finally offers. He's curious, actually, how Vic would have introduced him as a topic of conversation. _I say, Marty, I had drinks with an old mate of mine...you'd never believe it but the man's gone and become a country vicar!_ ...or would it have been _I've just the fellow you need to see about that complex of yours, nice Churchy sort of fellow..._

"He said you...knew one another, during the war."

"Ah." The hesitation tells Sidney that, whatever else Vic had said or not said about their past acquaintance, he'd made it clear they had once been lovers. He wonders how much Vic had saw fit to tell about the months they had spent snatching kisses, and more, when and where they could, about the arguments they’d had more and more often as time passed -- about the night Sidney had discovered Vic and James Eustis, both their trousers undone, in what had been Sidney and Vic’s private spot in the wood beyond the back gate of the camp.

He inspects the bottom of his glass, considers and then firmly ignores the desire for more, and sets the glass with a firm _thump_ down on the end table to his right.

"Well," he finally offers. "You'll know, then, that I have had very similar questions for God, in the past. And come to similar conclusions."

"I thought I'd come to all the conclusions I needed. Then I thought that being back in England was making me return to my school days. Then..." Martin shrugs.

Sidney looks at his own clasped hands. "I was in the Scots Guards," he begins, "when I met Victor. We were in officers’ training together. I think he kissed me as a bit of a lark, to shake up the nice middle-class boy from the suburbs. I suppose he was confident I wouldn't make any trouble."

"He would be." Martin's smile is fond but not indulgent. "He's very confident in his own powers of persuasion."

"I was, I think, more relieved than anything. I suddenly understood why I'd found my university friendships so frustrating."

"You understand, then," Martin says, leaning forward earnestly, "what I mean when I say I'm not sorry to have...to have kissed him back. And then _kept on_ kissing him."

Sidney thinks about Geordie's lips against his, that first evening in his study -- unexpected, yearned for, and clarifying all at once -- and of the many and varied kisses they've shared since. How each one is different and somehow more intriguing than the last. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand in memory, as if somehow the tingle of his lips will give him away. "I -- yes, I understand."

They share a moment of silence.

"It's just --" Martin begins. Sidney forces himself to wait, conscious that he's treading a fine and necessary line, just now, between clergy and fellow traveler. He's damned if he knows in which role he'll be more helpful.

"...did you ever wonder?” Martin finally continues. “About ... about God, I mean."

Sidney raises an eyebrow: "About whether there is one?" _Damned if I know_ , he almost says -- but chokes it back.

Martin laughs, faintly, "...I suppose, yes, in a way. And, if so, whether he...approves?" He's rolling the now-empty tumbler between his palms, eyes on the glass and the afternoon sunlight that glints through it to the worn carpet at his feet. "I find...I find I'm waiting for some sort of...sign. Of...divine acceptance, or blessing, or -- or, oh, damn it all, I don't know. Victor thinks I just have some sort of...complex. Or something."

"And yet," Sidney points out, gently -- because he still can't quite believe it of Vic but here they are -- "he's taking you seriously enough to ring me up and ask me to give you God's blessing."

"Oh." It's clear Martin hadn't thought of it that way. "Oh," he repeats, very softly.

"It matters to him that this matters to you," Sidney says.

Martin nods.

"So...suppose you get your sign. An unmistakeable one. A..."

"Burning bush," Martin says with a wryness that suggests he's hoped for exactly that.

"Exactly. What then? Is there anything you'd stop doing?"

They're both silent again for a long moment. "Nothing I haven't already stopped," Martin says at length.

"Anything you'd begin?"

He flushes, then his eyes screw shut. He pushes a knuckle against his lips, but the sob he's trying to hold back shakes his shoulders all the same. "Sorry," he whispers.

"No. It's all right," Sidney tells him softly. "It's all right." He takes Martin's empty glass from his trembling hand and pours them both a little more.

When he turns back from the sideboard to set Martin's glass on the end table by Martin's elbow he sees Martin fumbling in his pocket for a handkerchief. He's just about to offer his own, crumpled but clean, when Martin locates his own -- of linen, Sidney notices, monogrammed with Vic's initials -- and mops ineffectually at his splotchy face.

Sidney knows from experience that most people prefer to have their tears go unremarked when they fall to pieces in front of the vicar. This seems to be a special circumstance, however, so after a brief hesitation he reaches out a hand and squeezes Martin's shoulder.

He's trying, and failing, to keep this conversation on a purely professional level. It should be about what Martin needs from him. Instead, he's remembering a similar conversation with a kindly don. An elderly lecturer in New Testament theology who had offered him brandy and patted his arm and sat with him as he'd wept with the relief of having unburdened himself of a long-unspoken, enduring truth.

"I'm sorry," Martin says again, thickly, before hunching over in a fresh bout of tears. The movement pulls Martin’s shoulder away from Sidney’s hand and Sidney lets the moment pass, returning to his seat.

"Nothing to be sorry about," Sidney says, feeling his own nose and eyes prickle in sympathetic response. He tosses back his whiskey to distract himself and then waits while Martin wipes his eyes and blows his nose.

"Does Victor know you're here?" He finally asks, gently. He gets the shake of a head in response.

"I couldn't be sure I...wouldn't drive straight through the village without stopping," Martin says.

Sidney nods. "I'm glad you stopped."

Martin's eyes overflow again when he smiles. "So'm I."

"Do you think he'd be willing to come with you? Another time? Or I could come to London to see you both, and we could all talk about..."

"Wait." Martin twists the handkerchief in his hands. "Before we, ah, get to that. You asked what I'd start, if I knew for certain that...that God, that I..."

"If there was anything you'd begin -- or end," Sidney says, gently. "And there doesn't need to be anything, and you don't need to tell me --"

"I knew," Martin breaks in. There’s a slight hesitation and then the words tumble out in a rush. "By the time I was twelve, that...something wasn't.. that the road of university, ordination, mission work... wasn't for me. The road of a wife and children, either. And my questions... it had been the questions that made my father think I had a calling, but when the questions weren't 'is the woman with seven devils the same as Mary Magdalene' or 'who is a Samaritan in our time' but 'why would a loving God require blood sacrifice'..." His eyes flick up to Sidney's with a light of old fear in them.

"It's a good question," Sidney answers through suddenly cold lips. For a moment he seems to smell mud and blood and smoke again, and to feel the weight of Sandy across his knees. His stomach clenches and he folds his hands so the shaking won’t show so badly. He’d had to leave a lecture on Old Testament sacrifices in order to be sick, once, when one of the younger ordinands kept going on about being washed in blood. Sidney knew what it was to be covered in blood.

He draws a deep breath through his nose and focuses his mind on Martin.

"I was never baptized," Martin says abruptly. "Baptists don't, you know, until one's old enough to choose it. And by the time I was old enough, I didn't...I wasn't...I didn’t know if I believed enough. Or if I believed the right things. My father gave me so many opportunities to tell him I wanted to be baptized…but I didn’t take any of them. I never wanted to," he finishes.

It's not the first time Sidney has sat across from a refugee from the faith, someone who’s run long and hard from an unforgiving religious upbringing, only to find themselves back at the door of the kirk angry and hopeful and desperate for reconciliation in turns. It's always a delicate business, offering but not...directing.

He waits for the count of ten, until he's sure Martin has come to the end of what he will offer without further prompting.

"Do you want to now?" He tries, gently.

Martin wipes his eyes again and snuffles, looking down at him hands for a long minute, long enough that Sidney is on the verge of repeating the question when Martin looks up at him.

"Do you know, I...I think I...I think I might?"

Sidney tries to look encouraging.

"It wasn't...oh,” Martin sighs. “Maybe it was. It wasn't what I thought I was coming to see you about today. I thought..." He shakes his head. "I didn't know what to think, really. Victor's...offer was so unexpected. I was almost...almost _angry_ at him for making me think...think about all this --" His gesture is clearly meant to encompass Sidney, the vicarage, the institution of the Church of England, possibly God as well. "-- this part of my life I'd stuffed away. I haven't been through the doors of a church since my mother died. And not for three years before that. But when he said 'Let's get--' " his voice cracked. "When Victor said, 'Let's get married,' I thought at first he was joking. I laughed. And he looked so hurt! And then he explained about -- about you. And how if we -- if you --"

Sidney's not exactly sure what to call it either; they're in uncharted territory here and he can't exactly ring up the Bishop to inquire.

"--said a blessing over your union," he offers finally, and is relieved when Martin nods.

"Yes -- that. I only -- it is so _kind_ of you, and of...of Victor, but--" the tears threaten to spill over again. "I couldn't say yes to Victor not, not without it _meaning_ something. Something bigger than the two of us...do you see?"

Sidney thinks about those moments when he sees Geordie laugh and he feels an upwelling of gratitude: _What did I ever do to deserve you?_ It's like he's witness to something... important and good and more...expansive and enduring than himself, or Geordie, or the both of them together.

"I think I do," he says.

"If we're -- if Victor and I are going to do this -- really do something solemn and, and lasting then we ought to do it right." There's a bit of fierce defiance in Martin's voice as if he's arguing with someone, though if he is it isn't Sidney.

"And doing it right means being baptized first?" Sidney asks, to be sure he's following.

"Perhaps?" Martin twists his hands together. "It just...keeps coming. To my mind."

Sidney nods in recognition. The road to ordination had been like that for him: one tug after another, small and irrational and persistent. "If you decide you want that," he says gently, "I could baptize you. You don't need to decide now," he adds quickly. "In fact, I think it's better if you take some time to consider it as a real, an available, possibility. See if that changes things." This, at least, is familiar ground.

Martin nods and lets out a long breath. Then he laughs. "I always thought the churches that baptize infants would splash holy water on anyone who held still long enough."

"I can see how it looks that way." Sidney remembers baby David's round face wrinkling in puzzled dismay as Sidney trickled water over his downy head. "For infants, though, it’s a promise made by the family, the congregation, to raise the child in the faith. That's something else you'll need to think about - if the Church of England is where you want to commit yourself. "

Martin nods. “It’s the church Victor was confirmed in, back at Dulwich, although he says he hasn’t thought of it since -- or even thought of it much before. I gather he considered it a bit like studying for his School Certificate exams.” Then he laughs again. "You talk as if it's all so ordinary. A man like me..."

"Like us," Sidney says. It seems important, somehow, to be clear about this. After Martin nods again, he goes on. "We're not ordinary, perhaps. But we're not outside of humanity."

The clock on the mantle chimes four o'clock and Martin starts in his chair. "Sorry -- sorry," he says, reflexively, "I should -- I didn't mean to take up so much of your --"

"It comes with the job," Sidney reassures him. There are times when he wishes it didn't, but being available to people in need -- ready to listen and be as helpful as he and the church were able -- was one of the reasons he'd decided to enter the ministry in the first place. To stop feeling so helpless in the face of raw need. Sitting with Martin as long as he needs to be here is the least he can do.

Through the sitting-room door he hears Leonard’s footsteps in the hall, the muffled sound of voices as Mrs M and Leonard exchange a few words, the scuffle of Dickens’ nails on the polished wood floor as he investigates the possibility of going out. The front door opens and shuts and he remembers that Leonard had promised to make an afternoon call on Mrs Oxley, in hospital to have her tonsils out.

"How did you -- how did you and Victor meet?" He asks, a social politeness that masks his very personal curiosity. "Vic -- Vic said something about a club in Tavoy?"

"Club might be a generous way to put it. A little food, as much drink as possible, no questions asked about what goes on between adults." Martin's eyes go distant. "On the best nights it was... wonderful. Most of the time it was just damn hard work. But it was mine. Victor turned up to buy rubber, but the monsoons started early that year and so he couldn't get out as much as he'd planned. I'd been trying to make a zin thi liqueur...zin thi's a local fruit," he added. "He took to coming round in the afternoons to taste the latest batch. Then just to coming round whether I had something new or not. We...ah, went to bed...often, but I had a number of friends like that. Those afternoons were different."

 _Those afternoons were different._ Sidney thinks of afternoons with Geordie playing backgammon, the mutter of voices in the pub around them, the smoke inhaled, the taste of scotch. How much it matters, even when they're in public and he can't _touch_ just...feeling Geordie close at hand brings him calm and clarifies the world around him.

"I -- I understand that," he manages, clearing his throat. "Not that Vic and I -- not with Vic, with someone else." If he ever felt that way about Vic, he can no longer remember. He's finding it distinctly uncomfortable to imagine _anyone_ feeling about Vic the way he does about Geordie. It's like looking at double-exposure, overlapping images that don't quite match up. It's making him wish desperately for a smoke.

"When Victor's father retired last year," Martin is saying, "the board wanted him back in the country, on a shorter leash, and when Victor left I -- I found I had to follow him."

There's little chance of Geordie moving for work, unless he suddenly discovers a passion for administration, which is about as likely as Leonard going on the music halls. But Sidney...if the bishop sent for him and ordered him to Leverington or King's Lynn, or someplace the far side of Peterborough...what could he do? _That's not the issue at hand_ , he tells himself. Sidney leans forward, elbows on knees, letting his collar press into his throat to remind him he's on duty now. "I imagine that might have been difficult," he says. "To give up the club you'd worked so hard on. And to come back to England when you'd made a life in Burma."

"I'd been back," Martin says. "But...visits aren't the same, are they. And an English autumn's rather a shock when you're not used to it. Yet when I think of going back, all I remember is how flat everything was when I couldn't even expect Victor in a few months' time."

"You think about going back," Sidney catches the admission and turns it back to Martin for further examination, the way he's learned to do with the people who come to him with a particular puzzle or problem. Often, all they need is someone who will help them sort through their own understanding until they make up their minds about the way forward. He pushes aside for later examination the way his heart constricts, painfully, at the idea of Geordie being out of reach for months at a time.

Martin shifts in the armchair, almost a shrug.

"Not -- not permanently. Victor thinks he has -- _connexions_ to find me a position somewhere, imports and exports -- something that would require regular travel to Asia."

That sounded like something Victor would suggest. "You don't sound happy about the offer," Sidney ventures cautiously. He remembers how frustrated Vic had sounded when he’d told Sidney about Martin's insistence on separate lodgings. He wonders if this is part of the same disagreement.

"It's logical. I haven't the savings to keep loafing, and 'I had a club in Tavoy' isn't a compelling _c.v._ for much else. It does feel like becoming an appendage, an accessory. To Victor’s life, I mean, if he were to find me a position."

Sidney nods.

"I suppose that's how women feel, marrying men." Martin looks at the threadbare carpet without seeming to see it. "I suppose that's how it's meant to be."

"If it were...and I'm not sure it is, but if it were...why are you the woman, rather than Vic?"

Martin's head snaps up and he laughs in surprise. "Oh. I...oh. I didn't think...but that is exactly what I said, isn't it?"

"Marriage," Sidney says slowly, "has a somewhat vexed history in the church. And in scripture. I think you probably know the letters of St Paul rather well...?"

"I did. At one time."

"In first Corinthians he's very strong on singleness as the best path. 'For I would that all men were even as I myself,' that is, celibate. But he goes on, 'Every man hath his proper gift of God, one...' "

" '...One after this manner,'" Martin finishes, " 'and another after that.' " He shakes his head slightly. "I wouldn't have thought I remembered...but we used to recite, on Sunday afternoons."

"Everyone has his proper gift," Sidney repeats. "And, I think, successful pairs -- whether friends, or lovers, or, for the very lucky, both -- find a way for each person to use their proper gifts while they're together." He thinks of his sister Jennifer, and how the stiffness leaves her shoulders whenever her boyfriend Johnny comes into the room. He thinks of Amanda, the impeccable hostess, opening the doors to Guy’s impeccable sitting room. And of Geordie and Cathy, passing a sleeping David between them as they sat on a picnic blanket in the meadows.

The scent of onion and celery is beginning to permeate the vicarage as Mrs M starts the evening meal; Leonard will be in from the hospital. Sidney's head is starting to ache and he's aware that -- unfinished (not-yet-started, to be truthful about it) sermons aside -- all he really wants to do this evening is lay his head on Geordie's shoulder and fall asleep with the knowledge that Geordie is near. Something about this conversation has...unsettled him.

Except Geordie’s working the overnight shift three days running, and even if he weren’t they can only ever have passing moments of privacy in Grantchester. It’s been weeks since they’ve had an excuse for a night in London. A night _away_.

His counsel seems to have helped Martin, though, because the man is looking more thoughtful and less anxious than he had upon arrival.

"I should -- I should probably go," Martin clears his throat as the clock chimes quarter past. "Victor doesn't know I've come up and we're meeting for dinner at his club tonight."

Sidney stands as Martin does and extends a hand, "I hope I've been able to -- I've been of assistance. I'm glad to have met you."

"And I, you," Martin says, clasping the offered hand and shaking it firmly. "You've been...kinder than I...well, I'm not sure what I expected. But thank you for your kindness."

"Please give my best to Victor," Sidney says as he opens the door and ushers Martin out into the hall. He's surprised to find he means it. "I'll -- you may tell him my offer to discuss his request is still open, if you both wish it.

"I'll do that," Martin says. He steps out into the late-afternoon sun and pulls out a pair of sunglasses. He turns around one last time to shake Sidney's hand and then he's off down the path and through the gate to an Aston-Martin drophead coupe parked on the verge by the churchyard wall. Sidney stands, leaning against the door frame, and watches as Martin puts his key in the ignition and drives off.


	3. In which Sidney Discusses Things with Sunil, Professor Maberly, and Himself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Walking helps burn off the restless energy and ease the pressure on Sidney's chest -- forcing him to breath deeply, pulling crisp evening air into his lungs.

As Martin pulls off down the street, Sidney turns from the stoop and steps back into the hall. He can hear Mrs M in the kitchen so rather than go make himself a cup of tea he returns to his office, where Leonard has left the sermon notes in a neat stack on the desk, next to the typewriter. Sidney picks them up, then puts them down, and pulls open his desk drawer for the half-empty box of cigarettes and matchbook. He lights a cigarette and takes a drag but then stubs it out because it isn’t helping. The vicarage suddenly seems too dark and too close. There’s a chance he’d find Geordie down at the pub this point in the afternoon -- he glances at the clock on the wall -- but other people will be there, too, and Geordie will want to know what’s wrong.

He looks out the study window into the back garden, where sun and shadows are chasing one another across the budding forsythia. A walk, he decides. He goes back into the hall and whistles for Dickens, who comes loping from the kitchen with Mrs M close behind, drying her hands on her apron.

“Dinner in forty minutes, Mr Chambers,” she says. “Or when Mr Finch gets in.”

“I'll be back,” he assures her. “Just going over to the river. I want to give Dickens a run before it get dark.”

Mrs M sniffs. “Jacket,” she orders.

“It’s warm,” Sidney protests.

“It won’t be once the sun goes down, and you don’t need to be catching cold - worn out as you are, it’ll go straight to your chest again.”

“Mrs M, I’m fine.” Sidney bends to scratch Dickens' ears so she won't see his face. He's not sure what might be betrayed there, but Mrs M has a way of noting thoughts he imagined he’d buried.

She takes the jacket from the coat tree where he'd hung it that morning after coming in from confirmation class and holds it out. “It's only soup tonight,” she adds as he takes it. “It'll keep.”

“I'll be back.” Sidney shrugs the jacket on.

Another skeptical sniff. “Be sure that creature doesn't track in any mud when you get in.”

Dickens dashes out the front door ahead of Sidney and runs in several circles around the front garden as Sidney walks down the path and opens the gate Martin had closed ten minutes earlier. Dickens follows him out onto the pavement and they turn right toward the nearest footpath that will take them out through the fields to the Cam.

The sky is clear and the sun is slanting low across the trees, though darkness won't be complete for several hours yet. Sidney fists his hands in his jacket pockets to keep his fingers warm and is grateful to run into no one on his way to the river who wishes to exchange more than a polite nod. It's rained two days running and the ruts in the path are muddy puddles -- he'll need to wipe Dickens' paws down with a rag before letting him back into the vicarage or risk the wrath of Mrs M.

He passes the spot on the bank, empty now, where Caroline Mackenzie moors the _Natalie_ when she's up from Cambridge. The Easter term has begun and she'll be busy with lectures and tutorials with her graduate students until nearly midsummer. Meanwhile, Cathy has moved her regular night in Cambridge to Monday evenings when Sidney's parish responsibilities are at a low ebb. More often than not, Sidney finds an excuse to go by the Keating house to help Geordie make omelets for the children and read to the girls and Davie before Geordie herds the kids to bed. They're nearly done with _Winter Holiday_ and he makes a mental note to stop in at Heffer’s next time he's in Cambridge and inquire after a copy of _Pigeon Post_.

He bends down and picks up a stick from the path to throw for Dickens, busily criss-crossing the right-of-way to follow the scents of rabbits and mice, circling back to check on his master at regular intervals before running off again.

Walking helps burn off the restless energy and ease the pressure on Sidney's chest -- forcing him to breath deeply, pulling crisp evening air into his lungs. He squints up into the sky at a hawk -- Cathy would be able to tell him what species -- wheeling in the air above them and tries to sort out what about his conversation with Martin has brought him close to tears.

What floats to the surface of his memory is another spring day, not unlike this one, half a dozen years ago just before the Easter vac. When he and a fellow student had skived off an afternoon study session in the theology library to walk along the banks of the Cam.

* * *

“I'm sorry,” Sunil says quickly, pulling his hand back from Sidney’s fingers and stepping back. Sidney takes half a step to follow him before he stops himself and shoves his own hands in his pockets so he won’t reach out for the retreating hand. “Forgive me, Sidney, I... it is common, at home, between men who are friends, to take hands while walking. I know it is not customary in England; I will not forget again. Sometimes I…” He shakes his head. “Forgive me,” he repeats.

Sidney's heart pounds. His palm was hot where it had touched Sunil's, and his mouth was dry. “There's nothing to forgive.” He can’t slow his breathing, but he can make it quiet. “I, I'd consider it a compliment if, for a moment, to you I wasn't an Englishman, only... a friend. Walking with you.”

Sunil studies him for a long moment, then turns, slightly, to squint across the river into the afternoon sun. A flock of starlings have just risen from a copse of trees, en guard in the face of a hawk lazily circling on the updraft keeping watch for mice in the freshly-sown field below. Sidney tries to convince himself it was the birds' sudden movement that has captured Sunil's attention, rather than the man's desire to hide something on his own face -- or a kindness in giving Sidney a few moments' privacy to wrestle himself back into composure.

“I will miss this when I go home,” Sunil says. “The timbered houses. The changing leaves.” He faces Sidney again and puts a hand on his shoulder, a studied gesture that he might have copied from a _Boys' Own_ cover. “You.”

His lips are so close, so smooth now that the English winter isn't chapping them. “I could come to see you,” Sidney says, hardly knowing how he gets the words out.

Sunil shakes his head. “I do not think in India we could forget, even for a moment, that you are English. But I will write, and and I will pray always for you.”

“And I for you.” Sidney pulls a hand from his pocket and puts it out towards Sunil's shoulder, moving slowly to extend the moment in which he can imagine touching Sunil's cheek instead, or the soft-looking edge of hair behind Sunil’s ear.

Sidney manages not to curl his fingers behind Sunil's ear, though the intimacy of the gesture itches at the tips of his fingers. He feints at the last moment and slides his arm across Sunil's shoulder just a little too heartily, turning to squint into the sunset himself as if they're posing for a snapshot on the cricket grounds. Sweaty, grass-stained, bats in hand.

They aren't, of course. The riverbank is deserted and only the hawk and its scrappy antagonists are there to see. But it helps him to keep steady, imagining there might be a camera lens trained on them, rowdy teammates waiting at the edge of the field to haul them off to the nearest pub. It stops him from paying too much mind to the welling disappointment that Sunil's response hadn't been...something more.

* * *

Sidney had arrived back at Cambridge, after the war, with the intention of using the small inheritance his parents had left in trust to pursue his inchoate theological yearnings at a university he had good memories of. Memories untainted by the violence of the intervening years.

Sunil Gokahli had been a year ahead of Sidney at theological college, the second son of a local magistrate in Rajasthan. He'd been sent abroad for an English education before returning to teach at the missionary college from which he had graduated -- a condition of the scholarship that brought him to Cambridge.

He and Sidney were older than many of their classmates who’d only just finished undergraduate work, and they often found themselves at work in the library or the common room when their classmates were down in the High Street eyeing women students or motoring down to London for an early weekend. Sunil had taught Sidney to play backgammon and helped him brush up his cricket game, and Sidney had introduced Sunil to the lesser-known country walks in Cambridgeshire as well as a few of his favorite jazz clubs in London.

By the winter vacation, they were fast friends and Sunil had accepted the invitation to spend a few days between Christmas and New Year with Sidney and his sister Jennifer at their aunt and uncle’s home in north London. To help Jennifer avoid the well-meaning concern of their Aunt Violet and Uncle Teddy, Sidney and Sunil would catch the tube with her into central London and drop Jenny with the schoolfriend of the day before picking a neighborhood and wandering aimlessly: bookshops one day, jazz clubs the next, a long morning at the British Museum followed by lunch at one of the new espresso bars in Soho. It had been exhilarating; Sidney hadn’t felt this unburdened since before he’d crossed the channel in ‘41.

By the start of the Lenten term, at the end of January, Sidney couldn’t help but recognize the signs. The exquisite awareness, in the chapel or in the lecture hall, of precisely where Sunil was; the urge to bring him back a gift from even the most mundane excursion to the grocer’s or the tobacconist’s; the joy in seeing his smile and the ache when that smile landed on someone else. Signs he’d known since his school days, but not fully understood until Vic had helped the other shoe to drop. Signs he’d thought a career -- a calling -- in the church might transmute for good into something he wouldn’t have to keep hidden.

On the riverbank, Dickens gives a bark slightly muffled by the stick in his mouth. He mock-growls when Sidney tries to take it and wags his tail so hard it blurs. They tussle for a moment before Dickens lets go and Sidney throws it again. As he waits for Dickens to return, he watches the hawk drop sharply below the treeline for some prey sighted in the field below. Sidney makes himself pull in a slow, deep breath to the count of five, then let it out again. Why had his conversation with Martin, about Victor, brought Sunil -- no, the way a younger Sidney had felt about Sunil -- to the forefront of his thoughts?

His friendship with Sunil, unlike the long silence between him and Victor, had carried on steadily through the years and eventually settled into a regular correspondence, like the letters he exchanged with Hildegard. It’s been years, now -- since he’d been assigned to Grantchester, he thinks, or perhaps around the time he’d first begun spending time with Geordie -- since the arrival of an aerogram from Udaipur had set his pulse racing. Yet something about his conversation with Martin had brought that old pain to the surface.

Dickens lopes up to him and drops the gnawed stick across his toes, and Sidney bends to pick it up and throw it long down the path before starting to walk again, following after the ecstatic blur of Dickens. Perhaps he shouldn’t be so surprised that Sunil is in his thoughts today. After all, a month ago he'd have said Victor Gascoyne-Cecil was nothing to him. Or at most, an object of rather academic forgiveness and gratitude. Gratitude, because if he hadn't kissed Sidney outside the officers' mess that wet night in 1941, how would Sidney have found his way to Geordie? And Sunil was part of this stumbling journey of his, too.

He's nearly to Cambridge before he realizes how far and how fast he's walked. There's a stile across the next field from which, he knows from past experience, he will be able to see the spires of the chapel at King's rising above the playing fields.

Sunil isn’t the only memory who accompanies him across these fields. He used to walk this way with Amanda, too, when she came up from London on a Saturday to visit. It's only been two years since those days, but feels much further away across the landscape of his memory. Further away, right now, than the tumultuous months he'd spent in Vic's orbit. Possibly because it had been clear to him soon after he and Amanda had fallen in together that although he liked her well enough as a friend, what he felt for her would never match what she appeared to feel for him.

He realizes, as he whistles for Dickens to return so they can turn around and start back, that when he charts the course in his mind from Vic to Sunil to Geordie he often circumvents Amanda altogether as if she were a detour. But perhaps she’s more similar than it seems at first glance: another lover with whom he’d been fundamentally mismatched in some way. All three of them -- Vic, Sunil, Amanda -- had left Sidney, intentionally or not, feeling somehow _broken_. In a way that precluded more lasting, and mutual, commitments.

He would never tell a parishioner, he thinks ruefully, what he’s often told himself: that perhaps he simply isn’t _suited_ to more lasting, and mutual, commitments. That maybe he’ll be forever falling in love with men who are, in one way or another, unwilling or unable to fall in love with him in return.

And only now, thinking on it as he waits for Dickens to finish snuffling at the bottom step of the stile, does it dawn on him with a sort of horror that without even realizing it he’s put Geordie in that category: Someone who might indulge Sidney’s affections but whose primary allegiance is -- and should be -- somewhere else. With Cathy and the children.

Sidney hasn’t asked for anything more since their first kiss almost two years ago. Hasn’t even let himself imagine what more could be when it comes to Geordie and himself. It’s been the limit of his imagination to be able to love Geordie without the restraint of emotion Vic had wanted, or the redirection Sunil had (ever so gently) made. It’s almost physically dizzying, like seeing familiar terrain from the air, to suddenly find it conceivable that someone - that Geordie - might not only agree to reorder his life because it would please Sidney, but might already be wanting to. If Sidney would let him.

It’s embarrassing -- no, worse than that. Almost _shameful_ , Sidney thinks, that it’s taken listening to Martin talk of upending his life and livelihood for Victor while Vic, in turn had gone to the trouble of calling how many Chamberses across the home counties? -- to help him finally understand what he’s been missing. Or, rather, to truly  _listen to_ , rather than simply hear, what Geordie’s been telling him -- in Geordie’s own persistent way -- for the past year and a half.

 _This isn’t how we’ve made it work because we’ve never made it work before_ , Geordie had said last summer in Ardalainish, before pulling Sidney into bed.

 _I know it’s my bloody bed_ , Geordie had said, just weeks ago, just out of hospital and laid up with a chest infection. _That’s why I’ve got_ you _in it._

It seems so _obvious_ to him in this moment: that he has been fearful all along of treading somewhere off-limits. Of clumsily upsetting the delicate balance that Geordie and Cathy and Caro have made work so quietly, and so well, for so long. He has been behaving as if theirs were the relationship into which he was the interloper. Perhaps a tolerated -- even a _wanted_ \-- interloper, if there could be such a thing, but that still somehow an extraneous element. Unbalancing what was already right. Except now he understands that they’ve been telling, and showing, him -- _Geordie’s_ been telling, and showing, him -- that Sidney's become an integral part of making it right.

He wipes his hand across his mouth and realizes he’s trembling slightly. He inhales carefully, as if too much oxygen might make him feel faint, and listens to the soft exhalation as the air leaves his lungs. Does it again.

As he breathes -- _in, then out, in, then out_ \-- on the bank of the Cam, his eyes on the spires of King’s where they rise above the empty playing fields across the river, he thinks of another late afternoon conversation, years ago.

* * *

“One moment, Mr Chambers,” Professor Maberly calls from behind his desk just as the other third years are leaving the room. “A word if I may.”

Sidney sighs, inwardly, and lowers his book bag back down to the table from where he had just hefted it after packing his stack of library books and notes from the morning's discussion. “Sir.”

Maberly tilts his head to look at Sidney over his reading glasses. His thick white hair and his round, lined face make him an almost comic archetype of an academic, but there is nothing remote or absent-minded in his gaze. “You've not seemed yourself since the start of Michaelmas term, Chambers,” he observes in a tone that manages to be both reproachful and inquiring at the same time. It’s the lilt of his native Welsh accent, Sidney thinks, that tends to become more pronounced when Maberly is not lecturing to a room full of students. “And your essay on the Gnostic Gospels was not up to your usual standards.”

“I'm sorry, sir. I'll do it over.” Sidney hopes the professor won't ask what he was trying to argue in the essay; he's not even sure the feeble links he’d made between the quotations were in grammatical English.

Maberly inclines his head and then looks out his window as the clatter of footsteps in the passage fades. “The essay is a sign, rather than the substance, of the matter, I think,” he says. “Were you ill in the long vac? There is no difficulty in taking a term's leave if…”

“No!” The word comes out too sharply and Sidney clenches his fingers around the strap of his rucksack even as he forces his tone into something milder. “I beg your pardon, sir, I mean, everything's fine.”

“But it isn't.” Maberly’s voice is gentler than before. “Even if it isn't a matter for the infirmary.”

Sidney feels the bile of panic rising in his throat and swallows, unsuccessfully trying to quell the nausea. He opens his mouth. “I…” he starts, then closes his mouth around whatever might come next.

He glances, before he can help himself, over to the chair at the far end of the seminar table where Sunil had habitually sat last year -- across the table and down from Sidney's own usual place in the corner by the grandfather clock. It's occupied this term by a student from Sidney's year, a Mr Halliwell, whom Sidney only knows in a vague sort of way and dislikes intensely for sitting where he does.

To his right he hears Maberly let out a distinctly professorial sigh. “I have to return these Greek texts to the library,” he says, in what seems like an abrupt shift but which Sidney suspects glumly is not, “and I could use a strong lad like yourself to carry them. My strength isn't what it used to be.” Maberly walks with a cane, but Sidney doubts the weight of the three leather-bound books he's gestured to amount to an undue burden. Still, he moves to pick them up from the desk.

“I’d be happy to drop them on my way --” he begins, only to have Maberly wave the words away dismissively.

“No, no,” he says, pulling his reading glasses off and stuffing them into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Carry them for me, and then come back to my rooms. We’ll see if an application of hot tea and brandy has any effect on your troubles.”

All the way to the library, and back along the quad to his rooms, Maberly tells anecdotes about the Westminster Sisters and the Cairo geniza -- anecdotes far enough from his own specialty to spare Sidney any anxiety that they constitute a covert criticism of his work, and which require no response. Once they're in Maberly's study amid the clutter of dictionaries and commentaries and reproductions of icons, he installs Sidney by the window in the visitor's armchair with a glass of brandy while he makes tea.

“I ought to have said,” Maberly goes on, as if there's been no pause since they left the seminar room, "that I don't mean to force any confidences. But even if you don't wish to tell me what is making you unhappy, it would help me guide my prayers to know how you are unhappy... grief, anger, fear…” He puts a cozy over the teapot, but doesn’t turn towards Sidney. “To name it, I find, often takes the sharpest teeth from the beast. ‘Speak the word only…’ ”

“ ‘...and I shall be healed’.” Sidney finishes the line and takes the last sip of brandy.

The liquor goes some way toward settling Sidney's stomach. As Maberly assembles a small tray with teapot, cups and saucers, a sugar bowl, and a bottle of cream pulled in from the windowsill, Sidney hunches over his empty glass and tries to find something to say that will approximate the truth without getting too close to the dangerous heart.

Of all the words for unhappiness Maberly has put before him _grief_ is perhaps the closest approximation -- except to use it for the ache that has been his constant companion since Sunil set sail for Bombay feels somehow ... illegitimate.

“I've been ... lonely,” he tries, finally, wincing at the inadequacy of the word. “I lost -- I lost a friend. Over the summer.” He feels a pang of guilt at _lost_ , thinking of Sunil's most recent letter. The thin sheets of blue airmail paper, folded into the envelope and addressed in the unmistakably tidy hand. It was sitting on the mantle back in his rooms, waiting for him to have the courage to open it.

Sidney had lost many friends, during the war; they all had. A litany of names, printed in the papers and etched into the stone of memorials that bloomed across the countryside. It feels perverse, somehow, to speak of Sunil as _lost_ when, in fact, the man is unharmed, in good health, and working with great energy and enthusiasm at his school in Udaipur.

But _Sidney_ had lost him. Irrevocably, irretrievably so.

The professor _hmmms_ as he turns toward Sidney with the tea tray and carries it with care to the low table between them. Then he lowers himself stiffly into the worn, obviously well-loved armchair by the radiator with a grunt of satisfaction and considers Sidney for a moment or two before he speaks.

“The return of Mr Gokhali to India has, indeed, resulted in a noticeable absence this year,” he says finally. “And I don’t think I would be wrong in saying he was -- is -- something of a _particular_ friend of yours, is that right?”

Sidney breathes, breathes again. Maberly’s voice is mild, but there's an intensity to his gaze that Sidney doesn't trust himself to read -- and the damn lilt is back. “A particular friend of mine,” Sidney says, avoiding the question of verb tenses. “But not... I of... his.”

“Ah.” Maberly pours a cup of tea. “Lonely even before he left, then.” He holds out the cup.

Sidney thinks, with a sudden pang, of Sunil in a green jumper making chai over the gas ring in the common room, tea and milk and sugar and spices all heated together. And how his heart leapt when Sunil poured him a cup, and then twisted when Daniel Sunderton came in and Sunil offered him one as well. He puts the glass aside to take the teacup. “I... I didn't think of... it that way. At the time. But. Yes. Yes, I suppose so.”

Sidney can feel his hands shaking, slightly, as he lifts the teacup to his lips. The tea sloshes, a little, over the edge of the cup and into the saucer. He can feel Professor Maberly's gaze still on him.

“It is not the first time, I think, that you have felt such ... loneliness,” Maberly finally says, breaking the silence and Sidney's teacup rattles against the china saucer. It isn't precisely a question, but Sidney shakes his head nonetheless in silent confirmation.

Next to Maberly, the radiator rattles gently under the faded brocade cover, and there's a gust of late-afternoon rain on the windowpane to Sidney's right. He glances over, not really seeing either window or rain, but grateful for the excuse to look somewhere other than into his cup or at his professor. He feels ... transparent under Maberly's scrutiny. It isn’t an entirely unpleasant sensation -- in fact he’s beginning to feel as though transparency might bring welcome relief -- but it feels dangerous nonetheless. As if Maberly is making all of the connections, and coming to all of the conclusions, that Sidney has been trying desperately to ignore since the end of the Easter term.

“But with Mr Gokhali…”

“I fell in love with him,” Sidney blurts out, squeezing his eyes shut and then open again against the prickle of tears. He clings to the saucer of the teacup and tips his head to look up toward the crack in the plaster in the far corner of the sitting room ceiling. Anywhere but at the professor sitting without judgement across from him. That Maberly is being _kind_ almost makes it worse. Sidney’s eyes overflow, like the cup in his hands, and his voice cracks as he repeats: "I fell -- I fell in _love_ with him. I thought I could keep ... that we could be like brothers... but it isn't, I can't, I…”

Somehow Maberly is beside him now, taking the cup from his shaking hands and putting a handkerchief there. His hand settles on Sidney's shoulder for a moment, and then he moves quietly across the room to bring the brandy bottle back to their chairs. "Barton is away," he says quietly, referring to the don who has the rooms across the staircase.

Sidney hadn't realized how hard he was struggling not to sob aloud until he knows he can.. And then he can’t think when he’s cried like this, hard enough that the lump in his throat melts and the ache in his ribs becomes the ache of exertion and not the ache of restraint.

"I'm sorry," he tries, thickly, when he can breathe again. "I didn't mean to --" he coughs, roughly, to clear the phlegm from his throat, then hauls in another deep breath. It's surprisingly deep, and he realizes that the tightness in his chest -- a tightness that's been dogging him all through the long summer of working in his uncle's garden and sweating over Hebrew translations when the thought of going to bed and attempting sleep made his stomach revolt -- has gone.

“None of that, now,” Professor Maberly says, gruffly but without censure. “Don't imagine you're the first student to have a good, solid cry in my study and I doubt you'll be the last. Drink your brandy.” He gestures to the table and Sidney realizes that while he was crying himself out Maberly had refilled his empty glass and poured one for himself. Sidney blows his nose on the handkerchief -- resisting the urge to apologize again for the mess -- and picks up the glass. He leans back wearily in the wingback armchair, letting his aching head fall against the worn plush upholstery. He feels like he could sleep for a week, a month, perhaps the entire Michaelmas term: like all the sleepless nights of the past summer are finally catching up with him.

He closes his eyes. It feels easier like this, even though he knows Maberly is still in the room with him. “It feels like such a -- such a failure,” he admits. “I thought I was...better, _stronger_ \--”

“A curious choice of words, ‘failure,’ ” Maberly's voice swims in through the clog of Sidney's congested ears and the buzz of brandy. “Is it such a failure, do you think, to make ourselves vulnerable in love?”

“There was... someone. Before Sunil,” Sidney says, his eyes still closed. “In the army. He was the first -- the first man I’d ever kissed. And I thought, at first, ‘Well, he’s the answer.’ ” Vic had felt like one, at the time.

“He didn’t feel the same, I take it?” Maberly asks, managing to make the question both a wry observation and a kind offer of sympathy.

Sidney shakes his head, feeling the tears seep out under his eyelashes. “I thought, maybe,” he whispers. He feels the old tug of shame, threatening to pull him under and heaves a careful breath before he says it. “I found him. My … lover. With someone. We’d had a fight, a stupid argument about --” he laughs, damply, at what feels like an absurdity now, “ -- about the futility of prayer.” He remembers how hurt he had been when Vic had made some cutting remark about the prayers of fellow soldiers, when he knew perfectly well Sidney himself made it a regular practice.

“But I thought --” he has to stop to blow his nose, coughing to clear his throat before spilling the rest of the story in a rush. “I thought I’d at least convinced him that for some of us it was important. That it _mattered_. And it _helped_. I thought maybe he cared enough about me to listen -- listen to…” he has to stop again, and realizes distantly in the pause that Professor Maberly is the first person he has told this story to. “But two days later I st-stumbled into him kissing someone else. Kissing and -- more.” A shudder goes through him as he thinks about how hard it had been to tell Victor _I’ve had enough_ and then see, painfully clearly, how little Victor cared. “I was so hurt. But later, when I... I began to think I might have a -- a vocation in the church... it was such a _relief_ , it was such a relief, thinking that I could…”

“Put the genie back in the bottle,” Maberly finishes for him.

“Yes.”

“But it won't stay put, will it.”

“No.”

“No,” Maberly agrees.

Sidney opens his eyes and stares across the table, not sure if he's hearing right.

“I couldn't either.”

“What…” Sidney coughs again to clear his throat. “What do you mean?”

"Exactly what you think I mean. Or think I can't possibly mean. It's fashionable to describe it as a medical problem, but I have found it more useful to think of it as...the shape of my soul.” Maberly lifts the hand not holding the brandy glass on the arm of his chair and draws the tips of his thumb and his ring finger together as he always does to emphasize a point. “An inclination, like others, for science or music, for the mountains or the seaside, for beer or brandy.” There’s a pause.

“... Human love," he says, in nearly his lecturing voice, but with a deeper note of feeling beneath it, "is necessarily imperfect, but that does not make it not love. And love is -- _is_ , Sidney -- of God."

A tremor goes through Sidney, but it isn't terror now. “Even...?”

“Even this.”

He must have made some kind of noise, because Maberly goes on, “You were at King's as an undergraduate, weren't you? Well, perhaps you knew Alan Tregold, even if modern languages weren't your subject.”

Sidney tries to remember the dons and fellows ranged across the high table. “...did he like to wear blue ties?”

Maberly smiles. “And blue braces, when he could get them. And he told the most appalling puns. And had a terrible habit of wandering off between Euston and the British Library because he’d overheard a particular snatch of dialect and wanted to hear more…” He stops, with a private smile, and looks at Sidney. “He,” Maberly says, with unmistakable emphasis, “was my friend. For twenty-seven years.”

Sidney sits very still in the soft armchair and _feels_ more than hears what Maberly is telling him. The way he feels the moment during a session when a group of musicians, who've been playing passably well all evening, find their groove and everything shivers.

Sidney blinks, to make sure the world is still basically the same as it was before Maberly spoke and inhales through flared nostrils as if opening his mouth to draw another deep breath would jeopardize the delicate balance of the moment.

“Twenty-seven years?” is what he finally asks, in a whisper, unsure if he is questioning the accuracy of Maberly's account or simply echoing back the last words spoken.

“Twenty seven,” Maberly confirms. “Twenty-seven years, three months, two days, and thirteen hours from the first time he kissed me to his last breath on this earth. Though he would have said, because he always did say, that I was foolish for keeping such a careful account.” He sighs, and sets his empty brandy glass on the table next to the half-drunk cup of tea. “Ah, well.” The vowels are pure Aberystwyth.

"I'm -- my condolences, sir," Sidney falters. "I didn't realize --" he stops. He'd known men, during the war -- two or three come to mind -- who'd taken it particularly hard when a certain soldier died.  All of them had  _known_. But none of them had ever acknowledged it outright. That had been part of the bargain they'd all made from the beginning, wasn't it? Everything had to be temporary because _life_ was temporary. Vic had laughed at him, almost incredulous -- Sidney can still hear the harsh sound, and cringes at the thought -- when Sidney had made the mistake of revealing that he actually _cared_.

He's assumed, since then, that with men he wasn’t _supposed_ to care. It wasn’t as if there had been so many that he’d been able to test the point and then Sunil had just felt like a confirmation of that.

_Twenty-seven years, three months, two days, and thirteen hours._

"You weren't _meant_ to realize," Maberly says, gently. “The love of God aside there are a great many people in this country who don't look kindly on ... men like us.”

Sidney shakes his head, “No, I --” _didn’t realize you were a widower_ is what comes to mind, as foolish as it sounds even in his own head. It seems suddenly like a great offense that Professor Maberly should have lost-- should have lost a friend so dear to him and that none of them had understood to mourn his loss.

“But that doesn't mean, you see, that we aren't here -- that we don't ... find one another.” Maberly leans forward across the table and pats Sidney kindly on the knee. "Dare to believe, Mr Chambers, that God does not wish you to be always alone.”

* * *

“Dickens!” Sidney calls after the dog, thinking of the sinking sun and Mrs M’s soup on the hob. For all that she’d said it would keep, he’ll have to endure reproachful looks for the rest of the evening if it has to keep for too long. Dickens slows but doesn't turn, hot on the trail of something interesting that passed along the path earlier in the day.

Sidney waits, watching the ripples on the river, thinking of the way Geordie had chosen, that warm summer evening, to seek him out -- to reach for him. And more than that, to insist upon Sidney reaching back; to be willing to tell Sidney so much that, Sidney has since realised, Geordie has probably never told anyone else.

He thinks about Cathy -- _Sidney, love. I don’t think you realise quite how transparent you are at times_ \-- of Caro -- _What are you waiting to hear or see or...know?_ \-- of Cathy putting baby David -- _David_ Sidney _, you bloody idiot_ , he says to himself -- into his arms at the font.

He thinks about the girls making flower crowns for Dickens in the back garden of the vicarage and about waking warm and safe and loved in Geordie’s arms as the summer sun rose early in the Highland sky.

“‘Dare to believe, Mr Chambers,’” he says aloud to himself, in words swallowed up by the evening breeze. “Dare to believe that God does not wish you to be alone." And Geordie -- and Cathy, and Caro, but most importantly Geordie -- have made sure, despite his own best efforts, that he wasn’t.

“Dickens!” he shouts, and this time the dog comes bounding. “Let's go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowgirl really was a co-author on this chapter, pushing us to make it a bajillion times better than draft one. Collaboration can be a wonderful thing.


	4. In which Sidney and Geordie Discuss Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘It was raining. In April, on a Saturday,’ Geordie says, recalling the smell of damp pavement and earth. ‘We walked up from Turnham Green mid-morning to this little parish church in Chiswick. The vicar met us at the vicarage. His wife offered us coffee, though I think only Caro was able to drink it. And after a bit of awkward conversation we went over to the church.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, this chapter is ten times better because Crowgirl was our cheerleader. *blows kisses*

It's unfair, Geordie thinks, that both too much walking and too much sitting make the scar in his side itch and the muscles beneath complain. He stretches his leg out as far as he can under the desk, sighs, and turns over another page in the third case file from the seemingly bottomless stack he's meant to be reviewing. When his door opens he looks up ready to snarl in annoyance, then feels the snarl fade when he sees that the person stepping across the threshold is Sidney.

‘Please tell me there's a murder,’ he says, dropping his pen.

‘Oh. No. Sorry?’ Sidney's grin fades too fast. ‘I was just passing. If you're busy I'll ... ’

‘No. Yes, but ... my eyes are crossing, reading these.’ _I haven't seen you for a day and a half_ , Geordie doesn't say. He had hoped their Monday evenings together might ease the frustration at not seeing enough of Sidney. Instead, it’s made his absence on all the other evenings of the week more noticeable. He pushes his chair back from the desk. ‘I'll get Joyce to make us a cup of tea.’

When Geordie returns to his office after tracking down Joyce and sending her off for the tea, he finds Sidney has moved the pile of papers off his spare chair and sat down opposite Geordie's place at the desk. He's pulled the open file Geordie had just begun across the mess on the desk and is bent over to decipher Higgins’ cramped notations. The curls at the back of his neck are slightly damp from the exertion of his walk; Geordie clenches his hands against the desire to slide his fingers through Sidney's hair and cup the back of his scalp just because he knows he has permission to touch.

Instead, he settles for the more excusable gesture of a hand on Sidney’s shoulder as he leans over to see how far Sidney’s got.

‘Those're confidential police records, you know,’ he murmurs mildly. It’s a breaking-and-entering, no injuries, some property damage. Young hooligans with too much time on their hands. Higgins had arrested them not far from the scene -- the stolen wireless sets still in the back of the van -- and made them cool their heels in a cell overnight before calling their mothers.

‘I’d wondered why Charlie Ames was in church with his mother last Sunday,’ Sidney responds, twisting to look up at Geordie. The movement shifts the suit jacket under Georgie's palm, and he’s suddenly all the more conscious of Sidney’s shoulder blade and muscle beneath the layers of fabric.

‘Your tea, Mr Keating, Mr Chambers,’ Joyce says from the door, and Geordie steps away from Sidney with effort. He gestures vaguely to the piles of paper strewn on his desk. ‘You can -- ah, just -- just put it down there, would you, Joyce? Thank you.’ She’s relatively new to the station, still waiting for instruction before dropping the tea things on the nearest more-or-less stable pile of records as the more senior secretaries do.

Sidney closes the file and takes his own cup from Joyce, giving her the warm smile that he still doesn’t seem to understand the strength of. Geordie doesn’t miss, however, the way Joyce just gives him a brisk nod and puts Geordie’s tea down. ‘If you have anything to be typed, Inspector, I'll need it before two,’she says. _Not the distractible sort_ , Geordie thinks. At least not where sweet-smiling young men are concerned. A good candidate for front desk duty, he decides. He makes a mental note to suggest it to Miss Stevens, the head secretary, the next time he sees her in the hall.

‘I won't have anything more today, thanks.’

Joyce nods and turns on her heel to walk out the door with a nod of acknowledgement to Sidney on the way. Geordie shuts the door behind her and turns around to find Sidney looking at him with an unreadable expression. ‘What, do I have ink on...?’ He reaches uneasily for his own cheek.

‘No -- no.’ Sidney drops his eyes to his cup. ‘I just like. To look at you.’

Geordie should be used to Sidney’s habit of saying such things -- unguarded, undemanding, earnest things -- but he isn’t. He can’t shake the feeling that he ought to do more to deserve them, somehow. He hasn’t even taken any particular care today: his shirt is rumpled, and his tie has a tea stain from earlier that morning, and as he runs his hand across his cheek he feels the spot he missed shaving when he was interrupted by Ivy needing the loo. And still, Sidney looks at him like he’s someone … precious. It’s unnerving is what it is.

‘Don’t be daft,’ he mutters, without much heat, as he skirts the desk to return to his chair. Sidney just rolls his eyes and tests his tea. It’s an argument they’ll keep on having until, Geordie thinks, they’ve forgotten it’s an argument at all. The comfort that follows that thought is still new and feels too fragile to examine closely. Certainly not in his office at any rate. So he leans forward to pull his cup and saucer across the scattered pile of folders. ‘Made a right mess of this, you have,’ he continues. ‘I was in the middle of reading that.’

Sidney snorts. ‘That would be why it was open to page two?’

‘Yeah, well, you have to start somewhere.’ Geordie leans back in his chair with his elbows on the armrests and takes a sip of tea. Bless Joyce, really; her ability to brew a decent cuppa, even with the cheap black tea the station buys, might rival her valuable skill at deflecting Sidney’s charm. ‘It’s what I’m reduced to, isn’t it, when you can’t be bothered to bring me any suspicious deaths.’

‘So you’re not particularly busy this week? I mean,’ Sidney goes on -- as Geordie draws breath to ask _what are you on about?_ \-- ‘There’s not any reason we couldn’t get away? On our own, Friday night? Just to Bury St. Edmunds, not as far as London.’

‘I can make the time,’ Geordie answers, after a pause. Friday night into Saturday morning is one of his usual shifts to be on call -- has been for more than a year, now. It’s not so difficult to leave Cathy on her own with the kids on a night when there’s no homework to oversee, and Sidney rarely has time for more than pint on a weekend night. But he can make up something about Cathy wanting to go to the pictures, pull in a favor from one of the others who think they know what it’s like to have a wife at home feeling neglected.

Maybe he doesn’t have a _wife_ at home feeling neglected -- on the contrary, since Christmas Cathy seems happier and more rested than she’s been since Davie was born -- but Sidney, on the other hand ... Geordie considers that ridiculous mop of hair bent over the china cup and saucer and wonders if he’s not the only one feeling the strain of the past few months. He tries to think of the last night they spent alone together and realizes that it hasn’t been since before Easter, if you don’t count the time Sidney had spent with him while he was laid up with that damn chest infection.

‘I'll talk to Cathy, eh? Is there some ... special occasion?’ Geordie has the sudden, foolish thought that perhaps he’s forgotten an anniversary of some sort. But that’s ridiculous because he’d first kissed Sidney two years ago this August and it’s only June. Anyway, is a ‘blink and you miss it’ kiss in the garden the sort of thing one commemorates? Geordie’s never thought of Sidney as the sort who would want a fuss to be made. But maybe Geordie’s gotten it wrong, not asking or offering. He knows Caro and Cathy have certain dates they remember; a few of them he knows and a few of them he doesn’t. Perhaps Sidney --

‘No occasion,’ Sidney says, too quick in his denial. He hasn’t looked up from his tea. ‘Just -- the village is feeling a bit small. And crowded. And Mrs M is making spring-cleaning noises…’

‘Oh, God.’ Geordie flops back in his chair with theatrical sympathy. ‘Will one night be enough?’

That, at least, gets a laugh out of Sidney and lightens the set of his shoulders a bit. Geordie watches him over the edge of his cup as he takes another sip of tea. He decides that whatever Sidney's being cagey about can't be that bad; his hands are steady as he holds his cup and saucer, and he hasn’t gone for a cigarette yet.

‘Probably not,’ Sidney says, in answer to Geordie's spoken question. ‘But I would feel guilty leaving Leonard to cope with the Hoovering. And to write the Sunday sermon without anyone on stand-by to translate his latest theologian into terms we mere mortals might have a chance at understanding.’

‘Cathy certainly wouldn’t thank you,’ Geordie agrees, taking another sip at his tea. He waits for a beat or two but Sidney seems disinclined to offer anything further so he breaks the silence. ‘Bury St. Edmunds, eh? What does one do in Bury St. Edmunds?’ He remembers, vaguely, driving through it once on the way to a training exercise in the winter of ‘40. Dreary in the rain, is mostly what he recalls. ‘They have a particularly hip jazz club you're itching to pay a visit to?’

‘Say “hip” again in that context and I think you’ll hurt yourself.’ Sidney grins, briefly, then looks down into his teacup unable to keep up the teasing. ‘There’s supposed to be quite good beer. And a football club -- not sure if they’re playing this weekend, though. And a cathedral that’s planning some building expansion … and no one knows us there,’ he finishes in an undertone.

‘Ah.’ Geordie nods. For all that he jokes about Sidney working only one day a week, he doesn't envy the fishbowl life he has in Grantchester, unable to take a step unobserved. That’d weigh even on someone with a more conventional life than Sidney’s. In the past year they’ve been able to make small changes around the edge -- the Monday evenings here, an overnight to London there -- but the fact still remains that Sidney’s in his starched collar more than he’s out of it and even when he’s not dressed for the part everyone in the village greets him as the vicar -- _their_ vicar.

‘...You're not thinking of another church guesthouse, then?’

‘Good lord, no. I won’t put you through that again. No, a proper hotel. I can run to that for one night. Though it'll be...two beds.’ Sidney's eyes dart to the frosted glass in the door.

 _Can’t be worse than your pallet at the vicarage_ , Geordie thinks. ‘We'll manage,’ he says aloud. Not for the first time he finds himself wishing that it would take less than a day and a half on three forms of transport to get to Ardalanish.

Sidney smiles. ‘If it's all right with Cathy,’ he says, echoing Geordie’s earlier words..

Geordie’s never thought much of the fact that -- unless it’s police business -- he always speaks to Cathy first. Cathy has always come to him when she and Caro want a few days away; after all, someone needs to look after the children, make sure there’s a meal on the table, and everyone’s tucked in their beds. Now Geordie finds himself wondering what it’s like, for Sidney, to know that Geordie asks. Does it feel like one more way in which his every movement is under scrutiny?

‘She and the kids’ll be well set,’ Geordie says. ‘It’s just the one night, not like we’ll be leaving ‘em on their own for a week with no notice.’

Sidney nods but says nothing further. They sit in silence that’s almost comfortable, as they finish their tea, and Geordie’s just about to ask whether Sidney would be free for a round of backgammon before he’s off home to dinner when Sidney leans forward, elbows on knees, and says without preamble: ‘Tell me about your wedding.’

‘What?’ At first, Geordie isn’t sure he’s heard correctly. ‘What about it?’

‘I'm sorry,’ Sidney says, pushing his empty cup onto the table and making as if to stand. ‘It doesn’t matter, never mind.’

‘No, no, it’s just -- there's nothing to tell.’ Geordie scrambles to gather his wits about himself, resisting the urge to reach across the desk and physically prevent Sidney from scarpering. He’s been on the right scent after all, with the anniversaries. He sorts through his memories of the occasion. ‘It -- it was in London?’ he offers, watching Sidney’s face as he assembles his facts for a coherent retelling. Sidney’s watching him with an intensity he doesn’t understand so he stumbles on: ‘Caro knew someone who knew someone who could help us get a special license so we didn’t have to have the what's it called....’ He snaps his fingers trying to summon the word.

‘Banns.’ Sidney nods. He’s still poised on the edge of his seat but maybe if Geordie keeps talking he’ll stay there and forget to run off in the middle of whatever the hell conversation they’re having.

‘That's it. Just us and the vicar and Caro, and a curate for a second witness. We did have modern language -- _you_ , not _thee_ and _thou_ \-- Caro suggested that and Cathy liked it.’ He swallows, thinking again how this is the first time the story has gone further than the three original participants. ‘They liked the modern version because ‘you’ can mean more than one person.’

It feels _right_ to share this with Sidney. He’s surprised, in fact, by how important it suddenly is to him, to remember the details, and to convey to Sidney, somehow, what that day had meant to them. It isn’t that Geordie purposefully  _avoids_ thinking of his wedding. Only that it had been nearly a decade ago and such an inconsequential event -- comparatively speaking -- in the history that he and Cathy and Caro now share. He can recall half a dozen moments with one or the both of them that he’d swear to being more significant that the day they married. The first time Caro had made sure his soused, sorry arse made it back to his billet. Their first conversation about starting a family. The first time Cathy had impulsively reached for his hand; the first time his heart lifted to see her walking towards him. Buying the house in Grantchester. The midwife passing Esme into his arms; Cathy passing David to Sidney at the font.

When Cathy had said to him, ‘The way he looks at you…’ Her seeing, and believing, that Sidney had a place in their lives -- _his_ life -- even before he’d had the courage to believe it himself.

‘It was raining. In April, on a Saturday,’ he says, recalling the smell of damp pavement and earth. ‘We walked up from Turnham Green mid-morning to this little parish church in Chiswick. The vicar met us at the vicarage. His wife offered us coffee, though I think only Caro was able to drink it. And after a bit of awkward conversation we went over to the church.’

He pauses, trying to read the set of Sidney’s shoulders. Sidney’s eased back in his chair, but still leaning forward, elbows on knees. He’s listening with the sort of focus Geordie associates with a close game of backgammon or working out a theory for one of their cases. He’s no longer … pulling into himself in that miserable way that always makes Geordie want to bang his head, repeatedly, on something.

‘None of us thought to bring umbrellas so we ended up with our coats over our heads to avoid the rain. It was done inside of fifteen minutes.’ He remembers the echo of their words through the church that was empty except for the five of them drawn closely together in the chancel; the way Cathy managed to look at he and Caro both as she said _I will_ ; the scratch of the pen across the paper as they had each signed in turn.

Over the years, the wedding itself has seemed to fade in relative importance. They haven’t done anything more than have a family dinner on the date, the past few years; this spring they’d failed to do even that with first the children, and then Geordie, down sick.

Why is Sidney asking about his wedding _now_? He must think more about weddings in a single month than Geordie has in his entire life. But in the nearly two years since Geordie and Sidney have been lovers, they’ve never spoken of it, except implicitly when Sidney had pointed out on that first night Geordie had his vows to honor and Geordie had stumbled to explain that he was honoring his vows in the way they’d been made. He supposes Cathy, or maybe even Caro, may have explained it better -- but the fact that Sidney’s asked him for the story suggests that they haven’t. And Geordie had assumed, since Sidney never brought it up, that the question of Geordie’s being married had been resolved to Sidney’s satisfaction. But he’s asking now, so he must have a reason.

If he’d been pressed on the point that morning, by Cathy or Caro, Geordie would have said without hesitation that Sidney is part of their family in the same way that Caro is. They’re planning another holiday in Scotland at the end of the summer, and the children beg Sidney to come by more than one night a week; Dora asks each night at bedtime when he’ll next be there to read. Yet as Geordie tells the story of his wedding day, he realizes that he’s never thought of the need to articulate that assumption to Sidney himself. Caro has always been, implicitly, a part of his family life. He and Cathy had never been -- would never have been -- a family without her. He’s so used to having Caro around -- of thinking of her and Cathy as a pair -- that it has never occurred to him to wonder what it felt like for Sidney to see him with Cathy. For Sidney to look out over his congregation and see Geordie and Cathy sitting together at church of a Sunday, spoken to as ‘Mr and Mrs Keating’ by their fellow parishioners.

Nor has Geordie ever imagined what it would be like to see Sidney publicly acknowledged with a wife on his arm. Someone Sidney genuinely liked, his friend Hildegard, perhaps. What it would be like to know Sidney were going home at night to read to his own children. Thinking about the possibility feels _wrong_ , horribly wrong, like a sudden bout of sea sickness. He swallows against the bile rising in his throat.

 _Focus on what Sidney’s asked_ , he thinks to himself, gripping his tea cup tight enough that it rattles against the saucer. He can feel his wedding band heavy on his finger as if Cathy’s just pushed it over his knuckle as Caro holds her bouquet. He tries to recall what colors the flowers had been -- yellow, he thinks, with sprigs of something small and white scattered in. He and Cathy and Caro had gone to a pub after the exchange of vows for shepherd's pie and warm beer. He recalls the tang of the hops on the back of his tongue, the way Cathy had squeezed his hand and he'd felt the unfamiliar bite of the gold ring against his palm.

They had been giddy, the three of them, setting out on this strange new adventure together. Cathy had already been three months pregnant with Esme at the time, though only the two of them and Caro had known. Neither he nor Cathy had wanted to wait until after a wedding to learn whether or not intercourse was something they both -- that they could make a go of.

That's something else, Geordie now realizes, that Sidney has very carefully never asked about. He files that realization aside to cope with another day.

‘Caro had this idea,’ he says, still hoping to stumble on the right detail that will unlock Sidney’s expression and make what the hell they’re talking about clear -- ‘about rings. For all of us. When we’d decided… to get married… we all went to a jewelers, in Camden Town, the recommendation of another friend of a friend.’

‘Cath and Caro brought all their…’ Geordie waves a hand. ‘Earbobs and bracelets and what have you, because there were still nothing but utility rings to be had and not many of them. The jeweler was glad to get his hands on some half-decent stuff, and took some of what didn't get melted down into our things as payment.’

Geordie remembers, with a flash of gratitude undimmed by the years, the jeweler’s unruffled _three rings all the same, or two and one, or all different?_ that had been more touching somehow than all the careful enthusiasm of Caro’s friend who'd sent them there. ‘You’ll not have had any reason to notice Caro’s ring -- she wears it on her right hand -- but you’ve seen Cath's. It’s the same gold as mine, but --’

Sidney nods. ‘Silver band in the middle.’

‘It's what they call white gold. Same stuff as Caro’s ring.’ Geordie twists his own with his thumb, looking at the edge of the desk. ‘Technically, of course, it’s not what the church…’ A sour taste comes to his mouth again as he suddenly wonders, if Sidney is having some sort of long-delayed fit of conscience. If he’s winding up to tell Geordie that he can’t be party to adultery any longer. He looks up, swallowing against the nausea, and something in his face must give him away because Sidney’s out of his own chair and around the desk before Geordie can even think what to ask.

‘I’m not asking about because of the -- _Christ_ , Geordie, you can’t think that I care what anyone in the _church_ might --’ He sinks to his knees in front of where Geordie is seated, leaning forward elbows on knees waiting for the dizziness to pass. Geordie feels Sidney take one Geordie’s hands between his own and he lets Sidney’s proximity pull forward toward him until their foreheads just touch.

‘Your _job_ to care, isn’t it?’ he asks, quietly.

‘Like it’s your _job_ to arrest men like us on indecency charges?’ Sidney says, equally softly. Geordie can see his mouth twist in a wry smile. ‘We both know the church and the law are sometimes at odds with what’s right. And, in this case …’ He’s folded Geordie’s hands in his own -- like they’re praying together, Geordie thinks, with a small bubble of hysteria in his throat that nearly gives him a coughing fit -- and his grip tightens as he talks, like Geordie might drift away if not properly anchored. ‘In this case,’ Sidney says, ‘I don’t care what the church would say. I care that you and Cathy and Caro did something so … beautiful. And right for the three of you.’

 _We should do the same for you_ , is the thought that comes to Geordie’s mind, looking down into Sidney’s achingly familiar face. He feels his mouth go dry as he swallows back the words. It’s there in his mind, though, as clear as if they’ve actually done it: Sidney’s hand in his, Geordie slipping a ring over the bony knuckle of Sidney’s ring finger. The shape of promises made in his mouth.

He thinks what it would be like to go out for a drink, after; to see the ring on Sidney’s finger every time he picked up his glass. To know that it was on Sidney’s finger on a Sunday morning when he stood in the pulpit to deliver the sermon. Or stood at the great door at the end of the service, greeting all the parishioners in turn. Something tangible tying them together, even if the only members of the congregation who knew would be Cathy and himself.

Except Sidney couldn’t wear a ring. Not one Geordie gave him.

‘That’s what’s on your mind, then?’ he asks. ‘Thinking of getting married, are you?’ His throat closes around the question though he’d half meant it as a joke. He has a sudden, horrible vision of what Sidney’s wedding day might look like. How the decorating committee would go entirely overboard on the flowers, how pleased Mrs Maguire would be to _finally_ have the vicarage inhabited as she thinks it ought to be, how he would have to sit and watch Sidney smile. Be publicly, recognizably _happy_ ... with someone else.

Geordie’s never thought of himself as a jealous man but his throat is closing against the thought and he suddenly would rather like to punch something.

Sidney gives him a queer look. He squeezes Geordie’s hand, tight and reassuring, and then drops it -- Geordie shivers at the loss -- so he can push himself back up off his knees. ‘No,’ he says, returning to his chair and sitting down, ‘not --’ There's a pause. It would have been imperceptible except that Geordie knows the different flavors of Sidney's silences and this one is loud with thoughts unshared. ‘No, I just -- I had a visitor yesterday. Someone -- someone asking about a wedding. That’s all.’ Which explains nothing, really, because he must do two or three a month and they've never prompted a visit to Geordie before with questions about --

‘And you found yourself with a sudden, burning need to go to Bury St. Edmunds...?’ Geordie raises an eyebrow and Sidney flushes.

‘Not -- as such,’ he says, looking down at his own hands. ‘Look, I -- I need to think about some things before I can explain. It’s --’ he looks back over his shoulder as if Joyce might be listening at the keyhole, ‘-- I don’t want to get it wrong.’

‘Well,’ Geordie says, giving up for the moment, ‘Let’s start with that night away, shall we? I'll talk to Cathy and ring you up once I’ve got the go-ahead.’ He knows she’ll be happy to let him go, especially if he sweetens the request with a suggestion the she spend a long weekend with Caro when Caro's returned from that conference in Copenhagen.

‘Yeah, that’s--’ Sidney seems relieved. He puts down his empty mug and pushes himself to his feet with hands on knees. ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ he says. ‘I should go.’

‘I'll ’phone,’ Geordie says, again, reluctant to have him go. But the pile of reports won’t read themselves.

‘Geordie,’ Sidney pauses with his hand on the door frame. ‘Thank you.’

Geordie nods. ‘Go on,’ he says. ‘Save us all from Leonard’s Sunday sermon.’ And pulls the stack of folders back to his side of the desk with a sigh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is more to come in this series! But the next chapter's 0th draft is only half written and needs some spadework so please don't despair if there's a bit of a delay before we update.


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